Regular Show: Mordecai and Rigby in 8-Bit Land is a side-scrolling top-down SHMUP

It's no secret that Regular Show creator J. G. Quintel is a fan of video games, so when he met with developer WayForward to discuss making Regular Show: Mordecai and Rigby in 8-Bit Land, he came with ideas. He loves platformers, shoot 'em ups, top-down shooters, and wanted to mix all of those together into one experience. The result? A very, very strange game.

At its purest, the game plays like a traditional side-scrolling adventure, with the player swapping between titular heroes at any time. Mordecai can double jump and Rigby can crawl into tight spaces. Later, though, things become much more complicated. When you jump into an area where the background is starry, Mordecai can turn into a spaceship, flying around and shooting lasers like a traditional SHMUP. When you jump onto a grey background, Rigby sticks to the wall and fires a gun, with segments that play like an old school top-down shooter. And when these three genres are mixed together, the results are chaotic and unique.

By the time you're halfway through you'll be jumping off a platform and seamlessly turning into a spaceship, then turning back into Mordecai to fall through the ground before hitting a grey background and swapping in Rigby to run-and-gun through that. It's all wrapped in a retro art style (complete with music and sound effects designed so they could technically be played on an NES sound card) and makes for an ambitious game that fans of the show and old school gaming should be able to enjoy.

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